Sole Tech, Circle Game and the Joy of Record Store Inspiration

Spent my 43rd birthday in Detroit yesterday. Slept in, chased a six-year-old around a playground and of supreme excitement was my wonderful wife Malissa telling me to take the afternoon to go to whatever record store(s) I wanted. 

I’d been drooling at the Instagram posts for the Circle Game store for a minute. On the West Side of the city, it’s located in an area that I just don’t ever find myself in. My parents both worked in the around the corner some 35 years ago, but otherwise, the environs were unrecognizable and I can’t say that about many Detroit neighborhoods

As I pulled up to the store, I set a simple hope for myself…I just wanted to find a Sole Tech record. 

The outfit had only recently appeared on my radar as I delve further into ghetto tech at an age and geographic locale that belies the fact I could’ve explored the genre with comical ease in my youth. 

Within five minutes I find a Sole Tech 12”, then another and the store just melts into an indescribable whirl of amazing records of all genres and all price points. It was intoxicating. 

Owner Ben Hall pops out around 30 minutes into my visit and is surprised to see me. We’ve really only talked once in person previously. But this dude gets it and we are able to cut straight through the bullshit, a conversation riddled with shorthand for Archer Record Pressing, Sound Patterns, Griot Galaxy, Watts Club Mozambique and on and on and on. 

I got to hear a jazz version of a Ted Lucas song, was hipped to a gospel record out of Ann Arbor seemingly with only two known copies in the world and generally was just happy and enjoying myself in a manner that is unfortunately less and less frequent as I age. 

Overall, this was the most inspirational and satisfying visit to a record store in at least twenty years…and possibly ever. I’m holding up the two Sole Tech singles I grabbed, but really, the pile I walked out with was life-affirming in the best of ways. If you find yourself in Detroit, make way to Circle Game. It’s certainly worth it.

 

1971 Holy Redeemer vs. Catholic Central Men’s CYO Basketball Final Detroit, Michigan

When I was nineteen years old

I was with adults

They pointed at houses

And rattled off

Three digit numbers

Longingly

The only time

My parents

Ever said

Three digit numbers

Was bowling scores or batting averages

Things My Daughter Violet Has Said

 While attempting to make fun of me

"You look like 500 pounds of mac and cheese"

Immediately followed by

"You look like a camel on two legs"

I consider neither of these

As insults

I happily laugh

Ted Lucas "The OM Album"

Ten years of emails and phone calls, contractual negotiations, in person meet-ups, the physical relocation of a mess of tapes and probably a bunch of shit I'm forgetting. This is what it took to get Ted Lucas released on Third Man. And for me, spiritually, it was absolutely worth it.

There is so much I could write about this record, but at the moment it feels best to point you to an interview I did with local NPR station WNXP....

https://wnxp.org/on-the-record-ben-blackwell-on-1975-ted-lucas-re-release/

There's audio of me flapping my gums as well as fairly insightful text excerpts of said gum-flapping at that link. If I can further belabor maybe just two points touched on in the interview there, it's as follows:

- there is SO MUCH more Ted Lucas music to sift through and to share. Like, it might be more than 100 reels worth of material. Across every and all iterations of bands and styles that Ted embodied, from commercial jingles he wrote on spec all the way down to field recordings and answering machine tapes, Ted chronicled and saved just about everything. And film footage? You better believe it. Thank god. I said recently that Ted is the perfect combination of an artist who was prolific, an artist who was a genius, and an artist who was great at documenting himself. Those three things almost never intersect. If you're lucky you can get 2 out of 3. 

- the digital bonus track of "Love Took A Trip" is just magnificent in every way. I cannot stop listening to it even now, months after first hearing it. This is the song that overwhelmed me and brought me to tears in the Turnip Truck (local grocery store) parking lot. As a raga, as a blues ramble, as an acoustic paean to the twists and turns that are inherent to the nature of "love" as it were...this song inhabits at least three different personas and each one of them is independently brilliant. But married together they take on a profile larger than the sum of its parts. 

Cecilia Castleman at the Blue Room January 25, 2025

So...I took five excitable pre-teen girls to the Blue Room in hopes of inspiring them. 

My two eldest daughters and three of their friends were all giggling and laughing in the car ride over, going to see Cecilia Castleman for no other real reason besides it was at the Blue Room and an all-ages show and it seemed that they just might like it. My wife and I had separately come to the same conclusion that our eldest best connects with her friends via music, and given our direct connection to so much of it, we should be exposing these kids to any and all appropriate stuff every damn chance we get. So with my office mere yards away, it was an absolute no-brainer to drag a field trip on down to the Blue Room. 

None of us had listened to Cecilia prior to that night, but that kinda felt irrelevant. I remember that age, just seeing ANY live music would've captivated and enraptured me in a way that is just impossible now. The promise, the potential...it's intoxicating when you land it and some of us spend the rest of our lives dreaming of recapturing it. 

 

But 9pm start for a headliner can be a reach for the circadian rhythm of a body used to being in bed by that time. My eight-year-old laid on the floor and subsequently requested to be held all before Castleman sang a single note. The four older girls, fifth-graders all of them, held up a little better. I gave them the pep talk that the moment they wanted to leave, we could go. So after 40 minutes or so, they politely told me they were ready to go. 

The show was solid, Cecilia has a spectacular voice, it was her birthday, the band was locked in (I guess she usually plays solo?) and just a great example of an artist doing it right. And I think the girls appreciated it, in addition to the free Coca-Cola and Liquid Death I gave them (a ten year old holding a 16 oz. can will never "look" right, it just seems like a beer no matter what) and the game of Truth or Dare they played on the patio where, I shit you not, one of the dares was "say the word 'poop' as loud as you can." 

Stopped off at the merch table and I felt it was as good a reason as ever to blow some money on vinyl. So I bought multiple copies of Castleman's 8" lathe-cut single of "It's Alright" record and handed them to the girls, a little souvenir from their first-ever show at the Blue Room for the three of them whose last name is not Blackwell. I also let them each pick an LP from the storefront...two copies of "White Stripes Greatest Hits" and one copy of "No Name" if you're curious. 

Probably too soon to tell if any of my five young charges had that life-changing moment last week, but I could see other folks in the audience, adults, staring in their direction with a look on their face, not longing, but thinking back to that age, to the promise of everything that lay ahead and its ability to blow your worldview wide open. We'll get them there yet.